Best Friends
by powerstaark
Summary: Roku's final moments at the volcano and Sozin's regret. Twoshot.
1. Chapter 1

"I have a vision of the future, Roku."

With that Sozin climbed onto his Dragon. Roku watched in disbelief as the best friend he had ever had flew away, leaving him to die. He wished Sozin had never come to help him at all. To give him hope, to go out of his way to help him fight the volcanoes, only to abandon him was the cruellest thing the Fire Lord could have done to the Avatar.

Roku choked on the smoke, filled with terror, rage and despair. He knew Sozin was obsessed with expanding the Fire Nation but it had never even crossed his mind that the man whom he thought of as a brother would actually let him die in order to do so. Roku wished he had killed Sozin when he had the chance.

As the lava descended, Roku heard a familiar roar. The smoke made it hard to see but with the last of his strength, the doomed Avatar managed to look up to see his Dragon, Fang, hovering above him. He hadn't even realized Fang was still there, too preoccupied with fighting the volcanoes. He had told the Dragon to leave but part of him was hoping that Fang would disobey him. He knew it was selfish but he really didn't want to die alone. He was scared. He no longer felt like the Avatar but a feeble old man.

Would Fang abandon him like Sozin had?

Fang sensed his masters despair. He was tempted to go after Sozin and tear him apart but he couldn't leave Roku. He was better than Sozin. At the very least, perhaps Fang could comfort Roku and make the pain of Sozin's betrayal more bearable.

Fang flew down and coiled around his beloved master, knowing that neither of them would survive this. Even a Dragon couldn't survive in lava. Fang looked at Roku and the elderly Avatar's fear, anger and pain was quickly replaced with love and gratitude. There was no fear in the Dragon's eyes, just warm love and a strong resolve to stay by his side until the very end. Roku didn't have time to thank Fang for staying but he was grateful beyond words. Roku put his hand on Fang's scales, feeling their warm and comforting roughness as the lava washed over them. In their final moment, the Avatar and his Dragon took comfort in each others presence.

Sozin had never been Roku's best friend.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been twelve years since Roku's death. Twelve years since Sozin had betrayed him. The old Fire Lord had tried to distract himself by finding the next Avatar but that only made his guilt worse. In a way, he was trying to kill his best friend all over again.

Sozin knew he would die soon. He would never see his dream come to fruition. And he wasn't sure he wanted to anymore. The destruction of the airbenders had started a war that was getting out of control. Sozin should have known the other nations wouldn't understand. All he wanted was to unite the nations, to spread the peace and prosperity the Fire Nation had achieved with the rest of the world. But he realized now that war was the wrong way of achieving that goal.

Roku should have killed him. Sozin wished he had. Then he wouldn't have to live with the guilt that had been tearing him apart for twelve years and only got worse as the war continued. He still went on half-hearted missions to find the Avatar but had given up any hope of actually finding the elusive airbender.

And even if he did, he wasn't sure if he would kill the Avatar or beg for forgiveness.

Sozin had never begged for anything before. He'd never needed to and his pride wouldn't have allowed it anyway. But his pride was what had started this war in the first place.

Sozin wanted to stop the war. However since he was the one who started it, none of the other nations were willing to negotiate. And if he was honest, Sozin couldn't blame them. Most people, even members of his own nation, saw him as a genocidal maniac. And they were right. What kind of man would as good as kill his closest friend and destroy an entire nation? Sozin had been so obsessed with expanding the Fire Nation that he had never truly considered the consequences. Roku had tried to warn him, to make him see reason but the Fire Lord had been too damn stubborn. That had always been his greatest strength and simultaneously his greatest weakness.

Sozin kept thinking of Roku. There were times when he almost believed his friend was still there with him. Roku's voice in his mind eventually became hallucinations, which became more and more frequent as Sozin neared the end of his life. In his final days, he found himself talking to the late Avatar. Whenever this happened, he would quickly remember Roku at the volcano, reaching out and begging for help. And then Sozin would be the one begging, pleading with his friend to forgive him. The old Sozin would have been too prideful but that Sozin was dead. This Sozin was just an empty shell of a man, relentlessly haunted by the ghosts of his past.

He had left his dearest friend to die and for what? To rain fire on innocent people and start a war that was showing no signs of ending.

People believed that Sozin died peacefully in his sleep.

They were wrong.


End file.
